Douglas happily chomps away on a donut. He's the picture of bliss, except for that whole missing-mother thing. Dr. Mark "Brain Freeze" Greene approaches, clad in a horrible olive-and-orange toque that's protecting his skull from a potentially embarrassing case of frostbite. Someone rip that thing off! If Icicle Andy's finger can take a suicide leap, it seems fair to hope Mark's head might do the same. "Nice hat, Snoop," Frank says. Mark complains about the cold hospital, claiming the lounge thermostat reads fifty-six degrees, and Frank snipes that he should get used to this, for it heralds an imminent ice age identical to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. "The cold didn't kill the dinosaurs, Frank," Mark says loudly, and too slowly. "Cholesterol did." It's not a great line, but it hit me that other actors on this show would've pulled it off and made it chuckle-worthy. But coming from Anthony Edwards, it sounds more like a plea. "Please like me," he's saying. "I'm funny! Remember Goose? You liked Goose!" Yeah, and Goose died. On so many levels.

Dr. Elizabeth "Heart Like a Tundra" Corday appears, busy and barely looking up from her chart. Mark pulls her aside and frantically whispers that he found a lighter in Rachel's laundry. "She's smoking," Elizabeth deduces. Good thing she cleared that up, because I was pretty worried that Rachel had started chugging butane. It occurs to her that Rachel might have graduated to the bong, since her boyfriend Andrew -- "Ex," Mark says snottily -- tested positive for pot. Mark wants to search his daughter's room, but he's too weak to make that decision himself and wants Elizabeth to do it for him. She's not giving in, though, because she has an actual brain, and though she turned it off on her wedding day, she's determined to use it now. Mark reminds her that asking Rachel won't guarantee a true answer -- duh -- but Elizabeth still thinks that a room search unforgivably invades his daughter's privacy. Sure, she suggested he rifle through Rachel's pockets, but only because it's a natural part of the laundry process. Come to think of it, what idiot hiding a smoking habit isn't meticulous about checking pockets? Rachel is dumb. Totally gets it from her father. Mark, suddenly distracted by a so-called "patient" at this big building with doctors, drops the subject and leaves.

At the mall, Carter and Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen horse around in a toy store. She coos over a toy, but when Carter suggests she buy it for her absent son, Chen's face darkens and she tries to answer, casually, that "they won't let me send any gifts." She does perk up when talking about the video she got of the child learning to walk. Chen seems awed by this, and partly wounded that her son is taking these strides independently of her. Bummed, she wonders aloud if she'll ever make any right decisions in her life. I'm guessing no, since she already blew her chance to leave this show for a better one. "Something will open up," Carter assures her. She cryptically suggests that it might open up at County General, takes a deep breath, and admits to Carter that she interrogated the waitress at Doc Magoo's to see if she remembered Weaver getting paged the night Paul died. Carter is noticeably taken aback. Chen confesses her desperation, but follows with the reveal that the waitress recalled Weaver coming in looking for her pager and ultimately finding it in the bathroom. "She couldn't answer my page, John, because she didn't have her pager," Chen stresses. Carter looks away, swallows, and looks back. "That explains it," he says. He seems dispassionate, which is realistic given that Weaver gave him his dream job because Chen quit. Chen doesn't say what she'll do with the information, but her eyes betray her.